Wishing and hoping I met Tony Benn only once, while researching Smear! He’s a lovely man with a big blind spot about the politics of the early 1980s in general and the Militant Tendency in particular. Here’s Benn in the course of an appreciation of Arthur Scargill on his standing down as President of … Read more
Mark Purdey Edited by Nigel Purdey East Sussex: Clairview Books, 2007 247 pps text, 8 pps of tables, £12.99 p/b Mark Purdy was an organic dairy farmer. This book results from his long battle against conventional wisdom concerning the source of ‘mad cow disease’, the variant CJD, and other neurodegenerative diseases which also affect humans. … Read more
[…] of money disputing this, and Goleniewski considered Mountbatten to be the leading opponent of his claims to the Russian throne. (On all this see Guy Richards’ Imperial Agent) A major Goleniewski supporter in the CIA was the late Herman Kimsey, a top assassination expert, who was also Associate Chief of International Intelligence for the […]
The assassinations of the 1960s A recently discovered sound recording of the assassination of Robert Kennedy shows that there was indeed a second shooter in the room. At least 13 shots were fired according to the analysis by Philip Van Praag, an expert in the ‘forensic analysis of magnetic media recordings’. Sirhan Sirhan’s gun could … Read more
[…] chief of provisions Colonel Botha.’ ‘Gehlen, who was always interested in the undertaking, its figures, its personalities and its results, succeeded in recruiting Violet as a special agent and granted him 6000 DM a month for many years. He also claimed that this sum had been agreed with the former head of the SDECE, […]
[…] around in certain sections of the British Right for about 45 years since the late and unlamented Kenneth de Courcy first alleged that Rothschild was a Soviet agent. But apart from that – I basically don’t ‘get’ this book. If there is someone reading this with more knowledge – and more interest – in […]
[…] for profit. In this hothouse atmosphere paranoia develops and conspiracies are everywhere, often inspired by supposed colleagues. Just as James Angleton was accused of being a KGB agent because of his overly close relationship to Golitsyn, so Lundy was smeared because of his working relationship with Garner. It is not a game for innocents […]
[…] some weeks in 1988 to get me to invite him up to live in Hull with a mixture of promises of information on his career as an agent for MI5 and stories about his ill-health and the failing NHS in London. He was quite a good actor — he had, indeed, been an actor […]
Michael Smith Gollancz, London,1996, £20 This is a curious and rather pointless book. In short chapters Smith attempts potted histories of MI5, SIS, signals and military intelligence. These are quite well done, but covering half a century in 20 pages, say, the chapters are barely more than sketches. (The Information Research Department gets a page!) … Read more
[…] of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, added the following information on LFI. (2) The Director of Labour Friends of Israel is David Mercer, former research assistant and electoral agent for Gwyneth Dunwoody, ‘life president’ of LFI. The parliamentary register of Members’ interests shows that recent visitors who have had flights and accommodation paid by Labour […]
